Veteran fights Verizon over U.S. flags hanging on office cubicle

Christian Schiavone

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 27, 2008 at 6:43 PM

Last fall, during Terry Skiest’s second tour in Afghanistan in the Air National Guard, a coworker back home told him that the standard-sized American and Massachusetts flags Skiest had displayed on the outside of his cubicle wall at the Verizon Business facility in North Acton had been moved several feet to the inside of his workspace.

Now that he’s done serving overseas, Terry Skiest has embarked on a new battle here at home.

Last fall, during Skiest’s second tour in Afghanistan in the Air National Guard, a coworker back home told him that the standard-sized American and Massachusetts flags Skiest had displayed on the outside of his cubicle wall at the Verizon Business facility in North Acton had been moved several feet to the inside of his workspace.

The coworker, Mike Wheeler, said a manager told him the flags were to be moved because they might be considered propaganda and be offensive to some employees, a claim Verizon Business denies.

Now Skiest, a growing number of supporters at Verizon Business and several labor organizations are fighting to get the flags back where they were.

“The right thing to do is to put them back and leave them alone,” said Skiest on a recent snowy afternoon outside his office where about 20 supporters held a 30-foot American flag to protest the company’s policy. “I just want the flags put back where they were.”

As Skiest left the building, members of the crowd, who came from across the state, shivered and shook the snow from the oversized flag. Several also wore miniature flags in their coats.

“Thanks, Terry!” they cheered, followed by a round of “Hip, hip, hooray!”

Jack Hoey, a Verizon spokesman, said the flags were moved because of a company policy that prohibits personal affects from being displayed in common areas.

“The notion that Verizon Business views the United States or Massachusetts flags as offensive is just silly,” said Hoey, noting that the company prominently displays American flags in common areas at many of its offices. “I’ve talked to the manager and he said he absolutely didn’t say that.”

Hoey added that Skiest’s flags inside his working space are still very visible from the common areas in the office and that the policy preventing personal items in public areas is necessary to keep offices orderly.

“It would be totally unmanageable to do it any other way. We’d have all kinds of things up all over,” he said.

Hoey added that Verizon Business supports its employees who serve overseas by offering benefits well beyond what is required by law.

As a compromise, the company offered to allow Skiest to donate the flags, making them company property and thereby allowing them to be displayed in public. Skiest turned them down because the flags have personal significance to him.

Skiest received both flags in a care package from a Veterans of Foreign Wars post during his first tour in Afghanistan in 2004. He hung the flags next to his tent and loaned them to pilots who carried them on missions. When he returned home, he hung the two flags on his cubicle wall where they stayed for more than three years before being moved last fall.

Since then, Skiest has gained support from many of his fellow employees, as well as labor unions, including the AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who helped him put up a Web site — putuptheflag.org — featuring a video of Skiest making his case. The site also features a form letter to Verizon corporate officials urging support for Skiest’s cause.

“For me to go and put my life on the line, not once but several times, all over the world and then to have to come back home and have this kind of thing staring me in the face, it upsets me. I want my flags back where they should be,” he says in the three-and-a-half minute video.

Rand Wilson, a spokesman for the ALF-CIO who helped organize the rally last week, said that Skiest’s complaint isn’t really a union issue beyond the fact that union members have turned out to support him.

“Nobody else would listen to him,” said Wilson. “What it’s all about is people working together and standing up and that’s what this is.”

But some supporters who attended the rally believe the decision to move the flags is connected to ongoing attempts to unionize Verizon Business technicians. The company has been traditionally non-union going back to its days as MCI, and the Communications Workers of America have been running a campaign to organize employees.

“It just goes to show you that Verizon will use any issue to defeat a union,” Steve Smith, a retired Verizon employee who now works for the IBEW, said as he held a corner of the massive flag. “To drag the American flag into this, especially a flag with such significance, they should be ashamed of themselves.”

But Skiest said he’s not interested in involving the issue of his flags in a union versus management head to head. He just wants the flags back where they were.

“Everybody’s trying to turn this into the union against the company. It has nothing to do with that except that they [the unions] are supporting me,” he said. “If the flags go up on Monday, you’ll never hear from me again.”

Christian Schiavone can be reached at 978-371-5743 or at cschiavo@cnc.com.

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